A Little Dignitie Now
by The Grynne
Summary: The coast of Scotland, 1663. Adam inherits his power from his mother.


_The growing old of my body and my face  
is a wound from a hideous knife._  
- Constantine P. Cavafy, 'Melancholy Of Jason, Son Of Cleander; Poet In Commagne; A.D. 595'

* * *

**A Little Dignitie Now**

The storm hits them unexpectedly three days into the crossing, throwing the sky and waves into a violent wilderness that the ship cannot break free from.

Every lamp is soaked through. In hurling darkness, Rebekka puts her arms around her boy and her hands over his soft head, not in hopes of keeping the shrieks and crashing of the tempest from penetrating his ears, but in a prayer for protection from the God that she turned her back on, ever since she discovered her illness and her curse. (Adonai, grant us this night and the morning after.)

Cries come from above deck, barely audible over the noise of thunder, growing fainter still as the crewmen continue their losing battle. (See us through, Adonai, that is all.) Not expecting any favours to come of it, Rebekka asks for what she thinks is possible, and no more.

* * *

* * *

There is a flickering in the light across her face. Rebekka wonders whether the buzzards have finally found them. She opens her eyes to a mid-day sun, and then has little doubt that is she is not dead, so sharp is the pain in the bowl of her stomach. Vomiting up bile and salt water, she becomes aware of the small hand pushing her hair - white, matted strands of it - back from her face. The realness of it. She offers a silent, final word of thanks to the Father she once thought had abandoned her. (Blessed are You, Adonai, for You are indeed great.)

'Mother?'

He has been told, over and over, never to call her that within anyone's hearing, for she looks old enough to be his grandmother. Now, however, Rebekka looks around and sees the beach; they are the only two living souls on it. Feebly, she manages to sit up, steadying herself with a hand on the slick surface of the rock at her back.

'Mother,' says her boy again. 'Where are we? Is this England?' Fine grit in the wind has made his blue eyes bloodshot, and he turns them searchingly to her. She fights the urge to rub at the streak of dirt across his otherwise clear forehead, to take him in her arms again, this time in sheer relief. His shoulders would be all bones and lightness; the top of his head downy like a hatchling. But Rebekka tells herself that he is near thirteen now, while she is a weak, old woman who in truth has lived only sixteen more years than he. Her nightmare is that he will grow up to be like her; that he has the same curse in his blood.

As long as she continues to fade the way she has been doing these last few years, she does not have the luxury of time in which to go on protecting him. More and more now, that is all that she can think about.

* * *

* * *

Picking among the driftwood and corpses, they recover what they can from the wreck, and when dusk begins to settle, they light a fire and arrange their meager finds around its circle of warmth: some rope, a barrel of fresh water and some dried meat, a compass with a bent needle, a pair of boots that Rebekka thinks will fit her once the leather dries through. All their own belongings, their clothes and the props of their trade, her two-headed coins and weighed dice, are lost under the waves.

Her boy holds up a long, thin object to the firelight. It is a large knife, almost a sword, and missing its sheath. 'The edge is good,' he points out, when Rebekka looks skeptically at it.

'But can you use it?' she asks. He changes his grip on the handle, testing its balance. Rebekka frowns. 'I don't want a demonstration, Adam. A yes or no will do.'

He looks down in thought, then nods. 'I think so. Eduardo used to give me lessons, when he thought you wouldn't notice,' he says tentatively, knowing that he has just broken another of her rules. They do not ever speak of past companions, whether they be the acting troupes that they often travelled with, or the men that Rebekka took up for the company, before her once-formidable beauty was spent. 'And I've been practicing.'

But she does not rebuke him as he expected. 'That's good,' is all she says.

* * *

* * *

With his new knife, her boy carves a plank of driftwood into the shape of walking stick for Rebekka to lean on. She puts on her dead-sailor's-boots, and watches him carefully store their remaining food in a piece of dry cloth. He takes out the mended compass from his pocket and offers it out to her. 'No,' she says, shaking her head. (Now we are even, Adonai.) 'You should decide where we go.'

He looks down at the crooked needle. 'South, then. I wish to see London-town.'

THE END

_11 March 2009_


End file.
